We come back to steam traction engines simply because I have first hand experience of what they can and cannot do and the aftermath of their passing. They concentrate weight onto their contact points with the road. Unlike say a tank or excavator which distributes it across a wide track thus lowering the pounds per square inch pressure on the ground.
Imagine your foot being stood on by a lady wearing stilettos and then one wearing sneakers. The former will hurt like hell because the psi is much greater assuming it is the same lady in each pair of shoes.
You seem to have great difficulty in accepting concurrent technologies working alongside each other whereas I have practical experience of them co-existing. As long as we are in Seattle in the early 1900's its worth pointing out that sailing ships, which were being made obsolete by steam power were still hauling lumber from Seatlles sawmills all over the world presumably because they were cheaper to operate than the steam ships. Iron hulled they may have been and no longer wood but sail was their motive power when linear evolution suggests that steam replaced sail.
For my part I will no longer comment on this as it detracts as it has done here from the examination of what was likely to have been going on. I see no way of establishing the timeframe of anything with any degree of certainty.
The scalloped edge is a machine made edge. Yes of course it could be this or that and have highlighted more than once the use of artificial stone in the 1800's Pelamite to create grottos and rockeries over here for example and a more modern usage in restoration works. Sadly these posts and images were on the sh v.1 so are now lost but crucially for me these uses are not load bearing uses. I have never come across any use of a artificial stone for load bearing. The nearest it gets is concrete and pre-stressed concrete. I have seen stone being worked by machines, powered by electric motors and they leave behind regular cut marks. It is the nature of the machine to leave these marks, As I said were it moulded there would be no need for them to be there. Rough stone degrades faster than smooth faced stone as crap and dirt has many more places to collect swiftly followed by bird shit, moss and seeds and subsequently plants and shrubs, buddleia being the one over here work with fungus and moulds to break the stone down and allow water to ingress and exacerbate the decay. Water in a crack in stone in Seattle will freeze and expand and blow the surface of the stone in one winter and I find it inconceivable that the builders and hopefully the architect was aware of this which is why the building is all but devoid of intricate ornamentation.
We can all of course invent all manner of things for what we are seeing in grainy blurry photographs but for myself I go from processes and machines. tools, methods I have experience of or have observed being carried out in the flesh.
So if it is of any interest here are my findings from the ratch around in the stone and Carnegie attachments to this story them I'm done.
First Carnegie in regards to the Seattle Public Library.
Seattle, even luckier than most American cities of comparable size, ended up with eight of these libraries. All but one of Seattle’s Carnegie Libraries still stand today
Of those seven remaining Carnegie libraries, only one of them isn’t a library any longer: the little brick Ballard Carnegie Library.
Carnegie Free Public Library, as it was initially named, per the raised letters on the main façade, is located on Market Street between 20th and 22nd. This Neoclassical gem was designed not by W. Marbury Somervell, the usual architect of Seattle’s Carnegie libraries, but by Henderson Ryan, who also designed the University District’s opulent Neptune Theater, and erected on a budget of $15,000.
So it would seem that the Seattle Public Library and this Carnegie Free Public Library were farmed out to other architects as the article implies the other five Carnegie libraries in Seattle were designed by W. Marbury Somerwell who must have gotten the contract for them as indeed this quote purports.
Five of Seattle’s Carnegie libraries, unlike the Ballard library, were designed by architect W. Marbury Somervell. Usually he was in cahoots with partner Joseph S. Coté, but for the Queen Anne Branch, he worked with Harlan Thomas, best-known for designing the Sorrento Hotel.
As a slight aside I discovered the town of Ballard was annexed by the city of Seattle and would be obliged if the American contingent on this forum could explain to me what this means.
In 1907, Ballard was annexed to the city of Seattle, and the Ballard Library became the first major branch of the Seattle Public Library System.
Historic Site Context-City of Ballard and NW Market Street Before it was annexed to the City of Seattle in 1907, Ballard was a well-developed suburban community with a prominent Scandinavian population. Its major industries included fishing, fish canneries, sawmills, and boat building. Ira Wilcox filed the first homestead claim in the area in 1852. Judge Thomas Burke and Daniel H. Gilman bought land in 1880, in anticipation of the construction of the Great Northern Railway. Along with John Leary and
the West Coast Improvement Company, Burke and Gilman built the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad in the district of Gilman Park. William Ballard bought a sawmill with Charles Stimson on Salmon Bay. Ballard also managed Gilman Park, and lent his name to
the town of Ballard when it incorporated in 1890. Ballard City Hall was built in 1899. The timber mill produced enough wooden shingles for Ballard to proclaim itself the “Shingle Capitol of the World.” Scandinavian immigrants constituted about one third of Ballard’s population, and had a major cultural influence on Ballard, which earned the nickname “Snoose Junction” after the their preference for snuff and chewing tobacco.1 Ballard residents approved annexation to the City of Seattle in 1906 to keep up with growing demand for infrastructure, and because of a polluted water supply.
The City of Ballard ceased to exist on May 29, 1907. On that day Ballard City Hall was draped in black crepe, and the flag on the city flagpole hung at half-mast.
Mr. Weber it seems only designed one Carnegie Library or library of any description, the one built in Seattle.
This description of the library at Ballard reveals a fact that I feel applies equally to the Seattle Public Library.
The interior, finished in stained fir and weathered oak, featured radiating stacks, a men’s smoking room (later converted to a reading room), and a ladies’ “conversation room,” along with a 500-seat auditorium on the second floor.
Radiating stacks suggest there were chimneys acting as radiant heaters or possibly as the Russian style of mass heating appliances transferring the heat of the fire into the brickwork which then radiates it out over time to keep the books dry. Given the rainfall in Seattle it would make a lot of sense to go to this sort of length and the brick arched opening in the photograph when combined with the dimensions and shape of the surrounding brickwork points to a fireplace not a door was as I had originally postulated.
Warmed walls act as radiators and they radiate heat to the books and the shelving and also the people.
Obtaining a Carnegie Library
Andrew Carnegie began his philanthropy to public libraries at a time when they desperately needed help. Even with tax levies, many communities could not afford to build their own library. Most libraries were collections of books located in highly unusual places: wooden shacks, millinery shops, offices, stables, and churches. One town even had their "library" in a rest room, where the matron doubled as a librarian. It was during his "wholesale" period of giving that Carnegie helped communities like these obtain libraries. A town in any English-speaking nation desiring a grant began by writing a letter of request to Carnegie’s secretary, James Bertram. Carnegie and Bertram were willing to consider any completed application.
The designs towns wanted for their libraries also caused problems. Until 1908, communities that satisfied the site and maintenance pledges were free to build whatever they saw fit. However, Carnegie and Bertram thought that many of the plans were not practical, because they had expensive exteriors and inefficient interiors. For instance, Bertram discouraged fireplaces, believing that they wasted space and benefited only those closest to the heat.
In 1908 Bertram began exerting more control over designs. For three years he required grant recipients to submit plans before building began, and then he wrote a book entitled Notes on Library Buildings
So it seems the Seattle Public Library donation was approved before Bertram took more control over the design process which of course limited the architects in what they could and couldn't do in regards the building.
One matter of design, however, may be indirectly related to Carnegie’s involvement. Although some big-city libraries made extensive use of sandstone, a large majority of the existing Carnegie libraries are brick. This may be explained by the fact that they were intended to be permanent public buildings. However, it may not have escaped the notice of city officials that brick, while more expensive in terms of construction costs, is less expensive than other materials to maintain. The city only had to take care of the building, while Carnegie agreed to pay for materials. None of the libraries are wood, even in communities where the lumber industry was the mainstay of the economy
I'd lay odds at least some of the people on the Seattle Library Board and the Seattle City Council were on the side of knowing considering how much brickwork went into the building which enabled them to offer such a large maintenance budget of $50,000 knowing full well that the actual maintenance of a substantially brick built building would be less than that. A route to backhanders if ever there was one.
Speculation on my part but I have yet to see any council anywhere not seek to make personal gains from 'public projects'.
Seattle first received funds in 1901, when the library, housed in the residence of Henry Yesler, was destroyed by fire which devastated the estate. The Library Board appealed to Mr. Carnegie, and although considerations of such requests often took as long as four years, Carnegie promised funds in the sum of $200,000 after only one week. Later, he added another $20,000 to spend on furnishings.
The massive stone structure with marble interior, designed by P.J. Weber of Chicago, was dedicated on December 19, 1906.
The same Seattle Library Board whose Librarian was implicated in the destruction of the Yesler mansion (See further down the article)
So the Library Board and the City Council got the cash in 1901. Did the Library Board then bring in the competition to design the thing?
Peter J Weber
The new Carnegie-funded Central Library was designed by Peter J. Weber of Chicago. Weber beat out 30 other firms for the honor.
30 other firms!
How often do these competitions get run and the winner is someone or some company which has no history of designing the building type in question, only all the bloody time. And where are the drawings of the other 30 entries?
Could be within the Carnegie papers I suppose but I for one cannot find a single one 'out on the web.
The Seattle Post Influencer
Was the newspaper that broke the story of Carnegie's donation just four days after the Yesler Mansion containing the Seattle Public Library was destroyed by fire?
Fire indeed seems to be a near ubiquitous method of bringing about infrastructure change within the United States. It is used far more than it is over here.
The wooden Yesler Mansion was consumed by fire in the early morning hours of Jan. 2, 1901, a New Year's horror that destroyed most of the Library's collection and sent shockwaves through the city.
Four days later came another shock. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer trumpeted its great scoop: Andrew Carnegie had agreed to donate $200,000 to build a new "fireproof" library in Seattle after city officials promised to buy a new library site and guaranteed an annual maintenance amount of $50,000 - such a lofty figure that the nation's pre-eminent library philanthropist thought it was a mistake in the secret telegram from the distant Northwest. He was assured that $50,000 was "none too large" for Seattle's needs. Carnegie responded with one of his largest library donations and his notation, "I like your pluck.
As a sidenote it seems the Library Board through its librarian seems to have some hand in the fire setting at the Yesler Mansion.
The oddly convenient timing of the fire cast suspicion on city librarian, Charles Wesley Smith, who had been “complaining about his narrow quarters for a year,” and was spotted near the library, minutes after it went up in flames.
A very convenient fire if nothing else and the speed with which the Influencer and Carnegie responded suggests, nothing more, suggest prior knowledge and orchestrated efforts to bring the new library building into being.
Seems they got the cash or at least the promise of it and then doing what bureaucrats do best they argued amongst themselves for two years as to where to build the thing.
Choosing a site for the new library produced two years of debate and rancor between the City Council and the Library Board. Newly expanded from five to seven members by city charter and newly empowered by a state Supreme Court ruling that firmly established its governance of library affairs, the board finally decided to act alone. The city spent $100,000 in 1902 to buy the city block bounded by Fourth and Fifth avenues and Madison and Spring streets.
Question is what owned the land? My guess would be the University Board but don't know. If it were actually a businessman or a city councillor who owned the land and benefited financially from its sale I would not be in the least surprised. Of course getting into these presumably public records is verboten during the COCO crisis but perhaps in the near future.
Then there is this rather vague statement of the time taken to build the thing.
Construction of the new library consumed more than two tantalizing years before it was formally dedicated on Dec. 19, 1906, during a gala evening that drew an excited throng of 1,000 people.
More than two years, three four five? Who knows?
The stone:
Washington Geology
Ignoring the obvious lack of a pair of legs on the man in the bowler hat and his incongruous scale to the men he is supposed to be standing alongside in this photograph and the equally incongruous man in the white shirt in the right foreground the copy underneath it reads to me like an accurate description of what the machine is doing.
It also shows that at least in 1908 the date attributed to the photograph states "the hoses" so it is sensible to assume that hoses were available during the build of the library so equally sensible to assume there were stone working machines in use possibly powered by steam and possibly compressed air was produced by steam powered compressors. Either way machines were being used in the working the stones under the removable roof.
An interesting insight into what is said to have been going on in the late 1800's. Could be reusing finished stone from earlier structures which could, nothing more, could point to pre existing stone built buildings in the Seattle area. It makes perfect sense to reuses stone that has already been worked unlike today where everything is trashed and nothing is reused. We really are a stupid society of supposedly intelligent people.
These cranes in the photograph dated 1904 are the same design/style as those in the library photographs and good luck to a traction engine being able to maneuver through that little rock pile.
Newspapers exaggerating, colour me shocked!
Tenino today:
The Tenino Stone. One of the big three Washington state building stones.
Here is one take on why the steps were needed after the building was first finished.
The site was on a rather steep hill fronted by wooden sidewalks and a dirty 4th Avenue. When its front door opened to the public on December 19, 1906, there was no need for a grand stairway.
Within two years, however, the construction of the Carnegie Library resumed when City Engineer R. H. Thomson (1856-1949) directed the regrading of 4th Avenue. At Madison Street, 4th Avenue was lowered 10 feet. One block north at Spring Street, it was lowered two feet more. This put the entrance of the library on the second floor, and required the construction of a grand front stairway to reach the front door.
I guess what I am trying to say with this is that i thought sandstone is a uniform stone but this one looks like it is a conglomerate due to the rocks of differing colour which looks like the aggregate needed for concrete. I am no stone expert so I am willing to be corrected!
The stone was acid etched prior to installation to create a uniform colour. Its described in that pdf I linked to above. Sandstone is a conglomerate as you can see where any sandstone is decaying. It is layered and decays in layers especially where ice can get in a force them apart.
Edit to add: A site I remembered from sh v/1 which is chock full of the machinery and dates in use
Quarry & Workshop Equipment
One describing the working method at the Tenino stone quarry and some qualities of the stone itself:
The Pittock Mansion, A Sandstone Chateau - Written in Stone
